The Quick Selection tool

The Quick Selection tool has been in Photoshopfor a few versions now, and it's quite useful.It allows you to select pixels based on criteria.Now, the Magic Wand often leads to lotsof clicking, and clicking to add, clicking to subtract.The Quick Selection tool on the other hand applies a bit more intelligence inits selection algorithm, and tends to doa better job of naturally detecting the edges.Let me show you how it works.In this case here, you see a couple of modified images.For example, up top here, I've made aselection of the handle and then shifted its color.

Over here, we've made a selection of the overall plane wing, andI was able to isolate that so that it was a bit more selective in its adjustment.Let me show you how it works. And I'll startwith this meat hook stuck into the side of the barn.To begin with, I'll choose the Quick Selection tool.You'll note it appears above the MagicWand tool, which indicates preference of selection.That looks pretty good. I'll tell it to auto-enhance in fact.And as I click and drag, you see therewith just one click, it got the proper selection.

On the other hand, the Magic Wand tool tends to sometimes be a bit finickier.There was the first click of the MagicWand, Shift click, shift click, Shift click, Shift click.And it took almost five or six clicks before it got a good selection.On the other hand, the Quick Selection toolwith a quick click and drag did pretty well.That looks good.And I'm going to click Refine Edge to make this a bit easier.Using the smart radius we'll grow that, and applyjust a little bit of feather in shifting outward.

I've got my active selection, and I can now make a hue adjustment.I'll choose Colorize,and dial in the color that I want for the handle.I can put the saturation level in. That looks pretty good.Remember, if you ever need to refine it, just click on the mask.And by clicking the Mask Edge button, you couldfurther feather that adjustment as well as shift it.And in this case that's working quite well.Because what I'm trying to do there is pick up a little bit of the orange spill.

So you see some of theorange reflected on the wood is now gone. All right, let's close that.I don't need to save the changes.And take a look at this image.Again the Magic Wand tool leads to a lot of clicking,and then subtracting and trying again and back and forth.On the other hand the Quick Selection tool is fairly intelligent, you simply clickand start to drag, and you will note how it tries to find things.If you release, you can go to another part of the document and start to drag as well.

The Option key will subtract if you need it.Here we go.And fairly quickly and intelligently, it will find and make an active selection.And by just clicking here on theselittle outcroppings, I can make it pretty accurate.There we go.Remember, you could adjust the size of the brush coming upand using the side slider here as well as the hardness.And if you want to use shortcuts,just use the shortcut of right or left bracket.

Right bracket for a bigger brush, left bracket for smaller.That's looking pretty good.I'm just panning around now. Looks like I've got just about everything.Left bracket, smaller brush. Let's pick up that little edge there.Very good. And to me,there we go. Looks pretty good.Looks like I got just about all the areas that I wanted.Let's Option click here to deselect that part of thewing, and Cmd or Ctrl + 0 to zoom out.Refine Edge, Smart Radius, turn that up a bit.

Looking pretty good.And now I'll add the curves adjustment. And with the On Imagetool here, it's very simple to grab someof the shadowy regions, pull those down for somecontrast and drama, and then come up to a highlight and lift that up to pop it.And there's my simple adjustment to really add some drama into that shot.And I like that, because the shadows are much richer.And it makes the shot look a lot better. Remember, Select >Reselect is a great shortcut.

If you want to then take advantage of that sameselection to put a little bit of vibrance in.And then, Select > Reselect, Select >Inverse, would make it very easy for you to then desaturate thebackground, as well as darken it down a bitso it's not as impactful drawing your eye to the front.Remember, that same trick we talked about before of controlling tone and saturation.

And with one simple selection, I was able to make four isolated adjustments.Now if you're on Photoshop CC, Iabsolutely love the extra step of Select All.Copy merged,and paste, and then I would encourage you to take advantageof making that a Smart Object and using the Camera Raw filter.So now you can add in some additional selective contrast there with the clarityslider, as well as control the overall balance of vibrance and saturation.

Andput a little post-crop vignette on to focus theviewer's eye, as well as take advantage of sharpening.And you see before, after, just that much more detail andgrit and the texture of the metal is really coming through

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Released

12/3/2013

Take charge of Photoshop and make better, more targeted image adjustments with selections—including hard-to-select objects like hair, fuzzy edges, and color ranges. Rich Harrington reveals the importance of precise selections, whether you're masking, changing color and tone, or even storing transparency, and shows you how to make them with the tools in Adobe Photoshop CC. Dive into the Select menu commands and the Marquee, Lasso, and Magic Wand tools, and then learn how to refine your selections with Expand and Contract, Smooth and Feather, Quick Mask, and other controls. Photoshop power users will also enjoy advanced techniques involving the Color Range command and alpha channel selections.

This course was created and produced by Rich Harrington. We're honored to host this content in our library.

Topics include:

What are selections?

Creating masks from selections

Moving a selection

Selecting with the Quick Selection tool

Transforming a selection

Using the Refine Edge command

Selecting a color or tonal range throughout the image

Making a selection with the Pen tool

Saving a selection as an alpha channel

Creating a selection from multiple channels with the Calculations command